Page 114 of Knocked Up

Here is the ledger.

I lost the biggest series of my life in June. My career high-water mark is behind me and everybody who watches this sport knows it. I have four years and then I'm done. My father is not going to say the sentence. There is no version where he says it.

That is the one side. That is everything on it.

On the other side there is a nine-by-eight room I do not sleep in any more. There is a woman down the hall who took my head in both hands last night and told me to stop talking. There is a dog who gets up for one person in this world and it is not me. There is a laminated document with a legend on it. There is a cat named after my father. There is eleven weeks and four days of a person who currently weighs, contested, eleven pounds.

And I stood in that kitchen at half past two and could not make it come out.

I have been trying since the 28th of June. It will not balance. It will not balance in the other direction either. That is the part I had never once considered was possible. In the arithmetic I was taught there is no such thing as being up.

I put the bottle in the sink. And then I looked at the refrigerator.

I got the marker off the counter. I did it one-handed, which took a while. The letters are not good and I'm not going to redo them.

CLAUSE ONE. SEPARATE ROOMS. VOID. NOT OBSERVED SINCE JUNE. NOT GOING TO BE.

CLAUSE TWO. RENT. NOTES THE AMENDMENT OF 2 JULY. STATES FOR THE RECORD THAT RENT IN THIS HOUSE HAS BEEN PAID IN FULL SINCE OCTOBER, BOTH DIRECTIONS. THE PARTY WHO WROTE ZERO HAS NEVER ONCE UNDERSTOOD WHAT SHE HAS BEEN PAYING ME.

CLAUSE THREE. QUIET HOURS. REPEALED BY UNANIMOUS SCREAM OF THE PARTY OF THE THIRD PART.

CLAUSE FOUR. NO REORGANISING. UPHELD. THE HOUSE WON.

CLAUSE FIVE. END DATE. NONE. SEE BELOW.

CLAUSE SIX. ANSWERING SERVICE. NOTED THAT THE FIRST NUMBER WAS CHANGED IN JANUARY WITHOUT NOTICE, IN BREACH OF AMENDMENT TWO. THE MANAGEMENT HAS DECIDED TO LET IT GO.

Then I stood in front of clause seven for a while.

It is the only one in red. She wrote it in block capitals at that table in about four seconds on the 19th of December, so she would not have to feel it.

NOBODY FALLS IN LOVE.

And under it, on the right, in a hand that did not slow down once, B.D.

I wrote underneath it.

Finding: Breach. Self-reported. Effective ten years ago.

Then I put the cap on and put my daughter in the bouncer on the table. I went and got my blocker out of the hall cupboard.

She came out at ten to four.

I knew she was there before she said anything. There is a board in that hallway that goes.

"It's four in the morning and the light's on. You're not in bed."

"I know."

"So I've come out here," Tessa said. "And I want to say before anything else that I've been awake since half two. I was lying in there listening to a silence with a specific texture to it."

"Come here a minute."

She came around the counter and stopped.

She looked at the board first, all of it, from the top. She got about four clauses in and put her hand over her mouth. She got to the bottom of it and did not take her hand away.

Then she looked at the table.